random funny fact

WTF Fun Fact 12780 – The Buck Moon

by

Why is it called the buck moon? Because of bucks, of course.

The Super (Buck) Moon

On July 13, 2022, we’ll see our second supermoon of the year.

According to Science Focus (cited below):

“Supermoons are categorised when the Moon is at 360,000km (or less) away from Earth in its orbital path, and we’ll often see two or three full supermoons in a row. The June full Moon, the Strawberry Moon and the August full Moon, the Sturgeon Moon, are both supermoons.

A supermoon is around 7 per cent larger and 15 per cent brighter than a standard full Moon, or 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than a micromoon. This effect is amplified further when the Moon is on the horizon, like it is this month, thanks to the Moon illusion.”

What is a buck moon?

Science Focus described the meaning behind the buck moon. And it really is all about bucks – as in male deer:

“Most species of male deer (bucks) shed and regrow their antlers every year. They shed their antlers in the early spring (or late winter), which then regrow and continue to develop during the summer months. As they grow, the antlers are protected by a thin, velvety layer which hardens, dries and falls away once they’re fully grown. This is why bucks’ antlers often look ‘tatty’ in the summer.

By July, it’s usual to see bucks with full-size antlers in preparation for the autumn breeding season. They’ll need to be in top fettle to compete with other bucks for the best females.

As such, the Algonquin tribe named it the Buck Moon.

Other names for the July full Moon include the Berry Moon, Raspberry Moon and Thunder Moon.”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Buck Supermoon 2022: How to see July’s full Moon tonight” — Science Focus

WTF Fun Fact 12778 – Krokettenmotie

by

The Krokettenmotie is an obscure motion passed by a council in northern Holland, the Netherlands that entitles council members to a bit of a snack if their meetings run late.

Frankly, it sounds pretty civilized.

How did the Krokettenmotie come to be?

When the future Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende, served on the municipal council of Amstelveen in 1993, he proposed the motion. And he fully admits to having had a juvenile sense of humor back in his younger days.

While the “croquettes motion” was meant as a joke, the other council members apparently agreed that any meeting that ran past 11 pm made them deserving of a little snack. The motion passed. Even better, it’s still in force (because why repeal a law that says you get a free deep-fried snack?!).

Updates to the Krokettenmotie

While it has never been repealed, the Krokettenmotie has been modified over the years, specifically to accommodate vegans and vegetarians.

In 2019, a vegetarian option was added. But that was likely a page taken out of a copycat motion passed in 2002 in Zwolle, which set the time limit to 10 pm and mentioned the option of a vegetarian snack as well.

Croquette controversy

As the Netherlands has focused more on healthy lifestyles and eating, all of the Krokettenmoties have come into question. After all, it’s not exactly the healthiest snack option. So many municipalities that have debated the croquette controversy have had members demands snacks such as fruit, nuts, and even hummus wraps as alternatives.

It may all sound ridiculous, but the justification behind the genuine debates is that the council is bound to do better work in the late evenings if they’re not hungry. Council members have pointed out that a bit of a nosh will help them make better decisions with clear minds.

Frankly, we’re just glad someone takes their snacks as seriously as we do.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Krokettenmotie” — Wikipedia

WTF Fun Fact 12777 – Busta Rhymes Island

by

Have you ever wanted to take a trip to Busta Rhymes Island? Frankly, we had never considered it – until now.

Unfortunately, that’s not the official name of the tiny piece of land in Shrewsbury, MA (well, Wrentham, to be exact) but that is how it’s known and even how it appears on Google Maps.

What and where is Busta Rhymes Island?

According to Zillow (which does not refer to it as Busta Rhymes Island, sadly), that land is “A once in a lifetime opportunity to buy your own ISLAND!” Sadly, it’s not currently for sale.

“The island is one acre and the seller has gotten an elevation certificate so no flood insurance is required. 823 Eastside Rd is a parcel of land on the shore with a big 2 story storage building and dock. Super convenient to be able to leave your boat on the dock to be able to get back and forth from the island.”

How the island got its name

Ok, we know what you’re really wondering.

(And in case you didn’t already know, Busta Rhymes is a 12-time Grammy-nominated rapper.)

The island got its name when a then-27-year-old Shrewsbury resident named Kevin O’Brien started maintaining the tiny island (that’s basically in the middle of a pond). He had been a fan of the rapper since he was a teen and decided to plant some blueberry bushes, set up a rope swing, etc.

“It’s a very small little island [with] rope-swinging, blueberries, and . . . stuff Busta would enjoy,” he told a newspaper in 2009.

O’Brien “named” the island semi-officially by simply applying a geotag on Google Maps, where it still appears as “Busta Rhymes Island.”

He also applied to have it named officially, but the U.S. Board on Geographic Names requires a celebrity to be dead for at least 5 years before a landmark can be named after them. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Busta Rhymes Island, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12776 – Swedish Banana Pizza

by

The rumor about Swedes liking bananas on their pizza started in 2017. In fact, Snopes (cited below) traced it back to a Tweet on August 11 of that year from Curators of Sweden. In it, “a social media campaign initiated by the Swedish Institute and VisitSweden, the pineapple-banana-curry topping trifecta made up the ‘most Swedish pizza there is.'”

We know what you’re thinking.

Eww, why?

Well, to each their own. Maybe you’d like if it you tried it. As pizza purists, we’re just planning to let them be about the whole thing without venturing into dough-destroying territory.

Is Swedish banana pizza real?

As with all internet rumors that sound too weird to be true, the folks at Snopes did the research for the rest of us. And we give them props for being really good at it. Who even knows what’s we’d believe at this point if not for them.

In this case, the Snopes folks did us a public service by reviewing a bunch of Sewdish menus from pizzerias in Stockholm only to find that many really did offer some sort of banana pizza monstrosity…we mean, combination.

Banana pizza with…curry? And tomato?

Ok, so for the American palate (which is eclectic at best, we’re not claiming to be conniseurs of anything other than pizza here, trust us!), it sounds a little gross. But believe us when we say it actually gets worse.

According to Scopes: “Two such pizzerias were Corella Kungsholmen and Stockholm Pizza, both of which offered the ‘Tropicana’ pizza, described as topped with tomato sauce, cheese, ham, pineapple, curry, and — you guessed it — bananas. In the U.S., the Swedish-style food joint Viking Pizza, which is located in Glendale, California, included its version of ‘Tropicana’ pizza, complete with all of the above toppings and finished off with the addition of shrimp and peanuts.”

Ok, so leave it to the U.S. to take an already sketchy-sounding pizza and somehow make it worse. You took an already questionable Hawaiian pizza and added pizza AND curry? Astounding.

We kid though – it’s never nice to “yuck someone’s yum,” as they say.

How Swedish banana pizza came to be

Snopes did some more research and if it didn’t seem rude, we’d just copy and paste it all because they really went out of their way to add some context. In fact, Sweden really likes their bananas, and “this love affair dates back to the early 20th century when Caribbean-grown bananas were first introduced to the Scandinavian nation, according to historical records.”

Picture it. Sweden, the earth 20th century. Boats comes into the harbor weighed down with tons of bananas. The descendants of apes (aka humans) no longer even know how to enjoy a banana. In fact, they asked the age-old question about every new fruit humans encounter: which parts are edible.

If you think about it this way, maybe it’s no surprise that some confused Swedes eventually put it on a pizza. Sadly, there are no extant written accounts of early attempts to try to figure out what to do with bananas, but we hope there’s a history grad student out there combing Swedish archives to find them. It should add some levity to all the reading about colonial oppression that it probably took to get those bananas out of the Caribbean in the first place.

Of course, there’s a lot to unpack here, historically, about how foods travel around the world, but we’re left with knowing that the banana trade has obvious interruptions during war time. What’s interesting is that as far as Snopes can tell, the banana pizza (with curry) thing started in the 21st century.

We’re going to need a food anthropologist to unpack the rest. The best we can do is tell you it’s not a rumor.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Do Swedes Really Put Bananas on Pizza?” — Snopes

WTF Fun Fact 12773 – Lord Hailey’s Vampire Hunting Kit

by

Does the buyer of an auctioned “vampire hunting kit” know something we don’t?

According to British auction house Hansons: “A mysterious vampire-slaying kit containing objects reputed to ward off the blood-thirsty monsters sparked an international bidding battle – and smashed its auction estimate to smithereens.”

Ok, we’ll, it didn’t sell for millions, which is probably the kind of money we would want to find a way to scrape together if we thought vampires were real.

How much should a vampire hunting kit cost?

On June 30, 2022, the kit was estimated to sell for £2,000-£3,000 ($2,400 – $2,600). But it quickly saw a five-figure price tag after the bidding began. When the hammer dropped, the final bid price was £13,000 ($15,638 and some change by the July 10th exchange rate).

It’s pretty impressive for something to sell for six times its estimated worth. You really have to want to own that particular vampire hunting kit to pay that kind of money.

But, why?

Why this vampire hunting kit?

Charles Hanson, the owner of Hansons Auctioneers, explained that the odd item inspired headlines around the world and that attention likely pushed up the price. But he was still shocked at the final value.

According to the Hansons website, part of its mystery and allure is the kit’s original owner: “It originally belonged to Lord Hailey, a British peer and former administrator of British India. Whether through fear or fascination, it’s interesting to know a member of the highest aristocratic social order, a man with a place in the House of Lords, acquired this item. It reminds us that the vampire myth affects people from all walks of life. I think the aristocratic connection made this object even more desirable and, perhaps, helped it on its way to a particularly strong result.”

Charles Hanson also added “William Malcolm Hailey, 1st Baron Hailey (1872-1969) was recognised for his intellect. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was Governor of the Punjab from 1924 to 1928 and Governor of the United Provinces from 1928 to 1934. And yet, amid his illustrious career, he was drawn to this vampire-slaying kit. That’s understandable. These objects are both curious and intriguing.”

So, what’s in a vampire hunting kit?

The 19th-century kit comes in a lockable box with Lord Hailey’s initials and address. The tools inside include “holy objects to ward off vampires,” including “two brass crucifixes on the lid which act as a sliding secret locking device. Inside are more crucifixes, a matching pair of pistols, brass powder flask, holy water, Gothic Bible, wooden mallet, stake, brass candlesticks, rosary beads and Metropolitan police paperwork from the period.”

Very comprehensive!

Vampires have long been a character in European folklore and two books only made them seem more real – John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).

“The task of killing a vampire was extremely serious and historical accounts suggested the need for particular methods and tools. Items of religious significance, such as crucifixes and Bibles, were said to repel these monsters, hence their presence in the kit,” Hanson said.

So, who bought it?

Sadly, we only know the new owner of the kit is from Derbyshire and they did not wish to be named.

The owner said: “I was stunned and delighted by the result. It’s a fascinating item, a conversation piece. I came across it in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, fairly recently. I liked it for its novelty and historical value. Interestingly, Lord Hailey has a memorial tablet in London’s Westminster Abbey which pays warm tribute to him.”

Maybe you will run across them if you walk around at night in Derbyshire – but you probably don’t want to run across someone so well-armed in the forest at night. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Mysterious vampire-slaying kit – owned by peer of the realm – stuns at auction” — Hansons

WTF Fun Fact 12769 – The Marriage of Mickey and Minnie Mouse

by

Sometimes Disney love stories do come true. Just take the example of the real voice actors behind the classic characters Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor were married from 1986 until Allwine’s death in 2009.

Are Mickey and Minnie Mouse married?

According to the Disney Parks Blog (cited below), everyone wanted to know if the two cartoon characters were meant to be married.

“In the September 30, 1933 issue of Film Pictorial magazine, Walt Disney was asked if his two stars were married. He explained, ‘A lot of people have written to him asking this question because sometimes he appears to be married to her in his films and other times still courting her. What it really amounts to is that Minnie is, for screen purposes, his leading lady. If the story calls for a romantic courtship, then Minnie is the girl; but when the story requires a married couple, then they appear as man and wife.'”

So, it was a marriage of convenience for the cartoon characters at least.

The real Mickey and Minnie Mouse

Taylor was the official voice of Minnie Mouse from 1986 to 2019, while Alwine voiced Mickey from 1977 to 2009.

But Allwine and Taylor kept their real-life marriage on the down low.

“When we got married, we kind of kept it quiet, because everybody was saying, ‘Oh, Mickey and Minnie got married. ‘It wasn’t Mickey and Minnie; it was Wayne and Russi. We wanted to keep it about us and not about the characters.'”

Of course, the creators of Mickey and Minnie Mouse were husband and wife as well – Walt and Lilly Disney!

It just goes to show that the Disney tradition has been a family affair from the get-go. It’s pretty sweet when you think about it.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Disney Romance: Mickey and Minnie and Walt and Lilly” — Disney Parks Blog

WTF Fun Fact 12767 – Lyrebird Mimicry

by

There are actually two types of lyrebirds, both live in Australia, and both are fabulous mimics. We just think the superb lyrebird has a better name. The other one is called Albert’s lyrebird and it’s a little less showy (but equally capable of mimicry).

Lyrebird taxonomy

The superb lyrebird belongs to the genus Menura (family Menuridae, order Passeriformes, if you like to get truly taxonomic). The birds live in the forests of southeastern Australia and do not fly – they are groundbirds.

For the most part, they’re not so impressive to look at. They look a lot like brown chickens. Well, except for the male superb lyrebird – he has to show off to attract females.

What does a lyrebird look like?

According to Britannica (cited below), “the male’s tail consists of eight pairs of ornate feathers, which resemble a lyre when erect. There are six pairs of filmy whitish feathers. One pair of 60–75-cm (24–30-inch) feathers that form the arms of the ‘lyre’ are broad and curled at the tip and are silvery on one side and marked with golden-brown crescents on the other. There are also two equally long ‘wires,’ narrow, stiff, slightly curved feathers that correspond to a lyre’s strings; they are situated in the centre of the curved ‘arms’…When the male displays in small clearings, which he makes at several places in the forest, he brings his tail forward so that the white plumes form a canopy over his head and the lyrelike feathers stand out to the side.”

Lyrebird mimicry

Here’s our favorite part of Britannica’s description: “In this position he sings, while prancing in rhythm, far-carrying melodious notes interspersed with perfect mimicry of other creatures and even of mechanical sounds.”

You might not think much of that at first, but the fact that a bird can mimic just about any sound is not only impressive but potentially creepy. Imagine walking through the deep forest in Australia (known for all manner of amazing-yet-terrifying creatures) only to hear the sound of a predator, a crying child, or a chainsaw!

We’d be freaked out, to say the least.

Seriously, listen to this bird mimic a baby crying!

Ok, now listen to construction noise (we had to double-check to make sure it was real):

Next time you head construction in the outback, look closer to the ground if you don’t see any men with tools. It may just be a lyrebird trying to troll you.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Lyrebird” – Britannica

WTF Fun Fact 12766 – Hashtag Octothorpe

by

Hashtag, pound sign, number sign – call it what you will. This -> # <- is an octothorpe (or octothorp).

It’s not a word we had ever heard before, but it’s no surprise that signs we use quite frequently for many different purposes actually have proper original names.

The 14th-century octothorpe

According to Mental Floss, the sign originates in 14th-century Latin manuscripts when monks used it to abbreviate libra pondo (or the Latin term for weight in pounds). That would have been lb (like we use today), however “At the time, it was common to add a horizontal bar to abbreviations, known as a tittle, to show that the two letters were connected, and that the letter “l” was not the numeral 1.”

But as scribes began to write faster, the lb with a dash through the l began to look more like a # (in other words, a pound sign).

The octothorpe goes mainstream

No doubt a lot happened in between those Latin manuscripts and the # appearing on typewriter keyboards, but we haven’t found any proper explanation of how that happened.

However, when AT&T made its first phone keypads, it wanted them to be a perfect square. That would mean adding two more buttons. They chose * and # because they were already common on typewriters.

But why an octotherp, octothorpe/octothorp?

But when did the pound sign turn into an octothorpe? When an employee at Bell Labs decided to make up a name for the sign.

The thought process went like this, according to Google engineer Chris Messina’s history of the word:

  • There are eight points on the symbol so “OCTO” should be part of the name.
  • We need a few more letters or another syllable to make a noun, so what should that be? (Don MacPherson at this point in his life was active in a group that was trying to get JIM THORPE’s (ibid) Olympic medals returned from Sweden) The phrase THORPE would be unique, and people would not suspect he was making the word up if he called it an “OCTOTHORPE”.

The birth of the hashtag

Ok, so why and when did we start calling # a hashtag?

According to CBS News, it started with a Tweet.

“It all started back on Aug. 23, 2007 with a tweet by San Francisco techie and former Google developer Chris Messina. He wrote on Twitter, “How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”

People didn’t like the idea, but that clearly didn’t stop it from catching on.

Then, a few days later, another user named Stowe Boyd suggested the # symbol be called a hashtag.

And the rest, as they say, is #history.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Where Does the Hashtag (a.k.a. Octothorpe) Come From?” — Mental Floss
“The Real Source of The Word “Octothorpe” — Chris Messina, Medium

WTF Fun Fact 12760 – 4th of July in Space

by

A 4th of July in space is certainly one to remember.

But space isn’t the first place we’d think of as an ideal place to celebrate America’s independence day. After all, the good hot dogs are down on Earth.

STS-4 mission astronauts TK Mattingly and Hank Hartsfield were the first astronauts to do it. It took 20 years of space flight for astronauts to be there on that day. Now, with the International Space Station almost always occupied, it’s quite common.

Space shuttle Columbia’s 4th of July in space

The first time it happened was on July 4, 1982

According to NASA (cited below): “That all changed with the STS-4 mission. On July 4, 1982, on the final day of their mission, astronauts Thomas K. ‘TK’ Mattingly and Henry W. “Hank” Hartsfield guided space shuttle Columbia to its first concrete runway landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. President Ronald W. Reagan, who two years later instructed NASA to develop a space station, and First Lady Nancy Reagan greeted Mattingly and Hartsfield as they disembarked from Columbia. Shortly thereafter, the President led a celebration in front of space shuttle Enterprise, saying, “TK and Hank, you’ve just given the American people a Fourth of July present to remember.“ To cap off the event attended by 45,000 people and broadcast on television, President Reagan gave the signal for the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft carrying Challenger, NASA’s newest space shuttle orbiter, to take off to begin its transcontinental ferry flight to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.”

After that, Independence Day in space became more common.

Future Independence Days in space

NASA described future July 4th space flights: “Ten years passed before another crew celebrated the Fourth of July holiday in space. The seven astronauts of STS-50 had completed about half of their 14-day USML-1 mission on July 4, 1992, but the busy pace of the science flight allowed little time for celebrations. Three years later, 10 people orbited the Earth during the historic STS-71 first shuttle docking mission to the Mir space station. In fact, on July 4, 1995, space shuttle Atlantis undocked from Mir, returning NASA astronaut Norman E. Thagard and his two Russian cosmonaut colleagues from a three-month mission aboard Mir. By coincidence, for shuttle crew members Bonnie J. Dunbar and Ellen S. Baker, this marked their second Fourth of July in space as they both served on the STS-50 crew three years earlier. The day’s undocking activities left little time for celebrating, although Mission Control played “America the Beautiful” as the wake-up song that morning. To satisfy Thagard’s request, following their landing at KSC, ground teams treated him and his colleagues to some belated Fourth of July fare of hot dogs, hamburgers, and hot fudge sundaes.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “Fourth of July Holidays in Space” — NASA